Using a Qt-based DLL in a non-Qt application

Question

Am I doing it right?

A client of mine has a group where I\'m developing Qt-based client-server stuff with a lot of fun widget stuff and sockets.

Another grou

Answer 1

Studying the Qt code it seems QCoreApplication is needed to dispatch system-wide messages such as timer events. Things like signal/slots and even QThreads do not depend on it unless they are related to those system-wide messages. Here is how I do this in a shared library (in a cross platform way using Qt itself) and I actually do call exec, because processEvents() alone does not process everything.

I have a global namespace:

// Private Qt application
namespace QAppPriv
{
    static int argc = 1;
    static char * argv[] = {"sharedlib.app", NULL};
    static QCoreApplication * pApp = NULL;
    static QThread * pThread = NULL;
};

I have an OpenApp method in a QObject (that is moc'ed) like this:

// Initialize the app
if (QAppPriv::pThread == NULL)
{
    // Separate thread for application thread
    QAppPriv::pThread = new QThread();
    // Direct connection is mandatory
    connect(QAppPriv::pThread, SIGNAL(started()), this, SLOT(OnExec()), Qt::DirectConnection);
    QAppPriv::pThread->start();
}

And here is OnExec slot:

if (QCoreApplication::instance() == NULL)
{
    QAppPriv::pApp = new QCoreApplication(QAppPriv::argc, QAppPriv::argv);
    QAppPriv::pApp->exec();
    if (QAppPriv::pApp)
        delete QAppPriv::pApp;
}

So far it seems to be working fine, I am not sure if I need to delete the app at the end, I will update my answer if I find something.